Measuring the thickness of the human cerebral cortex from magnetic resonance images.
Level 4 - case-series / case-control
Method development and validation study (graded by design analogy)
PubMed 10984517 · doi:10.1073/pnas.200033797
What was done
The authors developed an automated method to measure human cerebral cortical thickness across the entire brain from magnetic resonance images and generate cross-subject statistics in an anatomically based coordinate system. Reliability was tested using within-subject test-retest imaging, and accuracy was evaluated by comparing regional thickness measurements with published anatomical values.
What was found
The intersubject standard deviation of the automated thickness measurements was less than 0.5 mm. Specific test-retest numerical statistics and absolute regional thickness values were not reported in the abstract.
Why it matters
This method eliminates the intensive labor and orientation errors of manual cortical tracing, providing an automated tool to detect focal cortical atrophy across populations or individuals in psychiatric and neurodegenerative disease research.
Limits
The abstract does not state the sample size (n), participant demographics, MRI acquisition parameters, or direct comparisons against histological post-mortem ground truth. Diagnostic accuracy in clinical populations was not quantified in the abstract.
Cited by
- supports The human cerebral cortex is the outer layer of the brain measuring approximately 3 millimeters in thickness.